Fig. 28.—North of Ireland. ½———— Fig. 29.—Ireland. ½
In this case it will be seen that the blade tapers both ways from a low central ridge. Others of these flat celts are in outline more like Fig. 20. One such, in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy, is 12¼ inches long by 8½ inches broad, and weighs nearly 5 lbs. One in the British Museum, which, unfortunately, is somewhat imperfect, must have been of nearly the same size. The usual length of the celts like Fig. 28 is from 4 to 6 inches. One from Greenmount, Castle Bellingham, Co. Louth, is engraved in the Archæological Journal.[239]
Fig. 30.—Tipperary. ½
Occasionally the flat surface is ornamented. An example of this kind (7½ inches) is given in Fig. 30, from a specimen found in the county of Tipperary,[240] and now in the British Museum. The surface has the patterns punched in, and the angles between the faces and the sides are slightly serrated. Some few Irish celts are slightly fluted on the face, like the English specimen, Fig. 6.
Fig. 31.—Ireland. ½
Another ornamented celt of this class, from my own collection, is shown in Fig. 31. On this the roughly worked pattern has been produced by means of a long blunt punch, or possibly by the pane or narrow end of a hammer; but it is far more probable that the former tool was used than the latter. The two faces are nearly alike, and the sides have been hammered so as to produce a central ridge along them.
A large and highly ornamented flat celt in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., is shown in Fig. 32. The ornamentation on each face is the same, and the sides have been hammered so as to produce a succession of flat lozenges upon them. It was found near Connor, Co. Antrim, with two others of nearly the same size, one of which was scraped by the finder. The other is ornamented with a cross-hatched border along the margins, and three narrow bands across the blade, one cross-hatched, one of triangles alternately hatched and plain, and one with vertical lines. Parallel with the cutting edge, which, however, has been broken off in old times, is a curved band of alternate triangles, like that across the centre of the blade. Much of the surface is grained by vertical indentations, and the sides are ornamented like those of Fig. 4.
